


The Consultation

by NotNatural17



Category: Original Work
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Loss of Parent(s), Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-09-30 03:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17216150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotNatural17/pseuds/NotNatural17
Summary: Mothers aren't perfect. They can lie, cheat, neglect...die.Celeste Simmons Mother did each of these and more. She had a secret. A secret that one day she may have told Celeste - but things got in the way. Now she lies 6-feet under - her only purpose, to be worm food.However, time discovers truth. And this secret in particular, changes Celeste's entire life. Not for the better.The only person she can trust to confide in; a Doctor with a disarming smile and piercing gaze.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is Flash Fic created for my college EPQ. My goal was to write a short story in the style of Young Adult Literature. Hopefully it's not too bad.
> 
> 👻

My mother was a liar.

She used her deceitful wiles to part people from their precious pennies and dimes. I never understood, not back then, why she had to be so dishonest.

“I think I can see them,” she would breathlessly say.

“What can you see?” Her small audience would let out a collective breath. “

The spirits! They’re here. They walk among us.” Pennies would be rubbing together between trembling fingers and the clasps of purses would already be opening before my mother finished her opening speech.

“Another day, another dime,” she would sigh afterwards, something like resignation shimmering behind emerald eyes. I didn’t ask what was wrong. I didn’t even look at her as her red lips planted a stain upon my cheek. “You did well Celeste.” She would say, patting my ten year old head with a fond hand and guiding me away from the room with the crystal ball in it.

Her act was very “method,” so much so that she never broke character - even after the guests had gone. I was only mildly impressed by the perspiration I glimpsed sticking to her face and continued exhaustion after a session. But then I wouldn’t see her for the rest of the day. She locked herself away in that strange room with the scented sticks and magic cards. Only coming out to send me to bed, a distant look in her eyes.

And in those dark hours, where the morning sunrise refused to break through the grey mist of oppressing clouds, I would lie awake asking myself the same question; _Why does my mother have to lie?_

 

“Are you still in touch with your mother?”

Celeste looked up from her bitten nails and smiled sadly at the doctor sitting opposite her. “I can’t talk to her,” she murmured. “Because she’s dead.”

The doctor said nothing. Celeste watched as he bobbed his head. “I’m sorry,” he spoke, with a sincerity that shouldn’t of surprised her. “How did you react to her death?”

Celeste frowned. She hadn’t ever put into words what she’d gone through, within herself. “I felt,” she began - but stopped.

Celeste had only been fourteen. She’d greeted some customers at the door, welcoming them to Mistress Minerva’s home, where _‘nothing’s ever really dead.’_ Turns out the not-so-catchy slogan was a lie too. For just down the hall sprawled out on a table, smoky eyed and still, was her mother; thirty years old and dead of a heart attack.

“How did her death make you _feel_ Celeste?” The doctor repeated. “I felt…” Her lips tugged into a faint smile, “relieved.”

 

Celeste knew what the Doctor was going to say before he said it. But she didn’t interrupt as he peered over the rim of his spectacles and asked; “Do you believe that your mother possessed any ‘psychic’ gifts?” The fact that he didn’t scoff at the word _psychic_ was admirable.

“I believe she did.”

“Have you always believed?”

“No.”

Celeste remembered a time in the recent past where she believed her mother’s only gifts were that of mediocre acting skills and a flair for showmanship. “In fact, I renounced any idea that fed into what I thought to be my mother’s delusions.”

“So what changed?”

“She died.”

 

* * *

 

_March 8th 2011. Celeste age: 11_

 

Five years ago, an eleven year old girl with hair the colour of chocolate and eyes as deep as the ocean believed her mother was a witch. This was a thought not best helped by those around her.

“Does she sacrifice animals?” One boy asked her from across the lunch table.

“Does she eat babies for breakfast?” A girl snickered during class.

“Are _you_ a witch as well?” The whole school seemed to have asked at one time or another.

These cutting comments and slicing sneers had been a constant in Celeste’s life ever since that first add in the local paper;

_‘For friendly & Sincere Psychic Readings, call Mistress Minerva today and communicate with loved ones lost!’ _

Now each snide remark slid right off her, even if it was harder to hold her head up as high. But it only takes one. And if that one strikes true, there’s no way you can stop the damage that ensues...

“My mum says that your mum is nothing but a liar. _See?”_

And just like that her armour was ripped apart. It hurt back then and it hurt now. She could still feel the paper that’d been given to her, still see the bold, condemning print. In that moment a fog seemed to lift and she could finally see the world clearly for what it was - a clarity that she now viewed her mother through.

That afternoon upon returning home, eyes red and cheeks still wet, Celeste watched her mother come out from behind the double doors of where she worked - a place she had never been allowed to set foot in.

“Celeste, sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Her mother asked, painted brows deepening with concern. “Did something happen at school? Are you hurt?” A hand brushed past her cheek, parting the hair covering a pair of glistening eyes. Celeste tightened her grip on the paper she held by her side.

_She’s nothing but a liar._

Her mother’s eyes drifted down to where her fists trembled. She snatched the paper. A curse let itself out from under her breath. “Who gave you this?” She demanded.

“Is it true?”

Celeste watched her mother throw the paper to the floor, exposing the bold headline that seemed to shout above all other thoughts. “ _Of course it’s not true!_ These people, they - they lie because they don't understand, because the truth scares them!”

“So everyone but you is lying to me? My friends? My teachers? This newspaper?” Celeste looked up at her mother with the first embers of the hatred she’d feel for her.

“I’m your _mother._ You should always believe me.”

“And I’m not some idiot like all the other kids in my school! Like the strange people that are always knocking on the door asking for you! I know they’re crazy. I can see it in their eyes. Just like I can in yours.”

Hurt struck her mother’s face as if she’d been slapped. Celeste’s voice rose to something that didn’t feel like her own. _“I know you're a liar!_ I’m sick of you not telling me the truth!”

“But I’ve always been telling you the tru-”

_“No you haven’t!”_

Resignation washed over her. She looked - truly looked - at the woman standing before her; Mistress Minerva, bonafide psychic.

“And you never will.”

Celeste remembered storming upstairs, throwing her school bag across the room so hard that it shook all the trinkets off her wardrobe.

That was the day in which a wall was built - a wall between her and her mother, a barrier that she refused to cross and denied her mother passage through. It continued that way for three long years, until Mistress Minerva died and Celeste lost the other side of that wall.

 

* * *

 

It was a morbidly grey day, the light seeming to leach all colour from the Doctor’s office. But he himself did not pale. His blazer remained a dark grey, the silver streaking through his hair barely noticeable. Unlike the doctors she’d seen before, this one had faint laugh lines sculpted into his face and a bow tie that had her almost smiling. Almost.

Amidst her staring, he cleared his throat. “I thought I was the one supposed to be analysing you.” At the sight of his smile, tension Celeste didn’t realise was there eased.

“It was nice of your aunt and uncle to drop you off here,” the Doctor stated casually. “Do you enjoy living with them?”

Celeste sighed through her nose and willed herself to smile. “Yes, they're very good to me.”

They weren't.

“How did they take your mother’s death?”

“As well as they could, considering the suddenness of it all.” And instead of inheriting money, they’d inherited a teenager.

There was a solemn pause before he approached the subject most doctors did. “And your father? Where is he?”

“On an 18 year bender God-knows-where.” And that was the end of that. Celeste hadn’t come here to sort through her daddy issues for 100 bucks an hour. This Doctor seemed smart enough to realise that.

Her eyes drifted as silence filled the room. They settled on a snow globe. It was tacky and the merry figurines of - elves? - were misshapen and awkward. Though the globe itself…that seemed to glow amongst all the other trinkets on the table. Seemed to whisper to her.

“Do you like it?”

Celeste’s gaze snapped up to the Doctor, only to find that, he too, was looking at the globe. “It was a gift.”

“From who?”

“My sister, she loves Christmas - not to mention these god-awful snow globes.” He sighed with resignation. “I get a different one each year.” Celeste huffed a laugh as she peered at it. She looked at the way the light hit its surface, how it gleamed and curved in that familiar way.

Celeste didn’t like the snow globe. “I dislike it too.” The Doctor murmured, his blue eyes fixed on her own. Celeste’s lips twitched into a faint smile.

“My family hated Christmas.” Her comment surprised her. “Said that we weren’t religious so why celebrate it? And by ‘family’ I mean my mother. We were never very close with my aunt and uncle during those final years of her life.” Her eyes were drawn back to the snow globe, her voice growing soft with reminiscence. “But one year - when I was very young, I had insisted. Oh how I’d wailed and demanded that there be a Christmas in our house for just one day. My mother relented. She gave me what she thought I dreamed of; a sparkling fir tree topped with a golden star and wrapped in tinsel. ” The silence in the office felt heavy as Celeste’s voice grew fainter. “But in truth, that was not what I wanted. I wanted a mother - I wanted a family.”

“You had a mother.” She’d almost forgotten the Doctor was there.

“I thought so to. But what she did wasn’t just from love - but from guilt. That Christmas she was back in that room, once again ensconced with the glowing ball and psychic cards.”

“You said before that you were never allowed in that room.”

Celeste nodded, her movements numb and distant.

“But that doesn’t mean you listened.”

The globe gleamed at her, the elves inside smiling wickedly.

“Once. Mother was out, I was young and curious.”

An incredulous eyebrow was raised. So Celeste offered more.

There was no spark of fondness or nostalgia when she delved into her memories, ripping out this particular one by the roots, revealing the grotesque decay in all its splendour.

 

_‘I trusted you. As you whispered sweet nothings in my ear. You were the first - the first who understood.’_

_A sweet smell._

_A dark blur._

_An unforgiving blow._

 

* * *

 

_April 2nd 2008. Celeste age: 8_

 

A small girl teetered on the tips of her toes, beads of sweat trickling down her temple. Slowly, carefully, her hand snaked up a wooden cabinet and towards its goal. The girl groaned as she reached farther, stretching herself so high she thought she might snap. That was until the bliss coolness of a ceramic pot greeted her fingers. A triumphant smile grew on her face, a smile that was promptly replaced by a large cookie.

Celeste’s mother was at the store. “I’ll be back soon. I just need to pick up some supplies,” she’d said before donning her funny looking coat and striding nimbly out the door. Celeste hadn’t known back then what kinds of strange ‘supplies’ she’d gone to pick up. All Celeste knew was that the house was empty.

Nobody watching the cookie jar.

So it was a good day, as the afternoon sun filtered in through the windows, bathing the house in a hazy orange glow. Celeste passed by the ominous room with the closed doors and strong stink of incense. The sun didn’t get to those doors. Darkness seemed to stain the wood in permanent shadow. And it was cold - always so cold near it - like all the warmth had been gobbled up by the darkness. Celeste shivered, choosing to forget its presence.

_Thud._

Her heart stumbled. Her feet stilled.

“Hello?” She called, peering up at the doors that seemed to advance towards her.

 _“Never enter this room, you understand Celeste? Only if I tell you to, do you set but one foot in here.”_ The ghost of her mother’s voice whispered in her ears until she dispelled it with a stubborn shake of her head. “Hello?” She demanded again, laying a hand on the ornate, golden handle.

_Thud._

Celeste cried out. That thud had been louder than the last one.

 _Baby!_ her mind seemed to taunt. She was a baby - or she would be if she didn't at least open the door. Perhaps something of Mother’s had fallen and needed to be picked up. Something priceless could be damaged. It's not like she’d ever know Celeste had gone inside - how could she?

_Smash._

Oh dear. Whatever that was sounded expensive. She may get the blame if she didn’t clean it up, if she didn’t even bother to try and fix it. Surely that was more important than some silly rule about a forbidden room? Celeste chewed her lip, her hand settling on the cold wood.

Her breathing slowed and everything seeming to dampen, except the whine of the door as it eased open.

_Darkness._

A dull, haze seeped in through thick curtains draped across the only window, dying the room a rusted tone. Everything was a murky shadow, silhouetted in that dirty evening glow. But something still managed to gleam. Something shiny.

Celeste stumbled towards it, careful not to disturb any of the items scattered atop the table.

A ball is what shone, a ball which stood as a centrepiece.

It was murky, a grey cloud seeming to have swallowed it’s transparency. And it shone, practically _glowed_ in amongst the rich violet of the tablecloth.

A chill finger trailed down the back of her spine, goosebumps rising like hackles on her skin. Celeste shifted, unable to look at the ball for much longer, instead scanning the carpeted floor and shelves haphazardly stacked with dusty volumes. She dared not turn on the light for some childish notion that, in this vague darkness, she was hidden. Hidden from her mother’s omniscient gaze that seemed to stain the walls.

 _This is a mistake,_ her instincts seemed to chide, turn around and close the door.

_Run._

But a shine caught her eye - a shine of the shattered glass that was strewn about the floor. This had been the smash she’d heard, a smash caused by a heavy mirror on a flimsy nail.

 _“Ow!”_ Celeste jerked, dropping the jagged glass shards she’d scooped up. A small cut marred her pale skin and she watched as crimson blood welled to the surface.

 _Time to go now,_ her finger sang. It did not take into account the _thud_ Celeste had heard, only the smash. Had something else fallen? The table beside her was draped in a thick cloth, detailed with foreign symbols and delicate script. There was nowhere else to hide. Perhaps whatever had thudded was under there.

Ignoring the faint sting of her finger, Celeste got onto her hands and knees. The table loomed. Her breathing became rapid, her heartbeat thumping in her ears. Growing louder. Turning deafening as she went to brush aside that long, dark cloth.

_Thud._

What happened next was a rush.

A piercing scream splintered through the silence. A scream that belonged to her. And then she was moving, her body springing up from the floor her legs already pedalling backwards until she could go no further. The wall stood steadfast against her spine, painfully so, until Celeste’s body stilled, her mind wiped clean of all thought.

The crystal ball still sat atop the table, but had...changed. Had begun to glow. A sickly green colour ebbed from within that clouded fog, a light that had Celeste’s insides twisting with each throb. The room soon fell under its spell. Walls elongated, carpets turned coarse and rough and that rusty afternoon haze was smothered until there was only green.

Celeste moved, twisting towards the double doors that now seemed worlds away. She ran. Ran in a room that suddenly felt the size of an entire house. And yet the orb still glowed - each ebb of its light coinciding with each deafening pound of Celeste’s heart.

She scrambled, her feet making up the distance between herself and the door with surprising speed.

Only then, breathless and bordering on hysterical, did Celeste’s shoulder finally slam into the door. Handles were a foreign concept, as she hurled herself into the wood again and again. Something has to give. The green light intensified, the room working itself up to a crescendo just as-

Freedom.

A lightless orb, a normal room, a glassless floor is what returned when those doors slammed shut behind her.

 

* * *

 

“I was eight years old when I accused my mother of witchcraft. She dismissed my fearful ramblings with a laugh and a promise that she was no such thing. I didn't start to believe her until three years later, when I instead chose not to believe in anything at all.”

“And this room, you believe it was... _haunted?”_

Celeste laughed at the thought. “No, I believe that I was a child who was told to stay out of a room and my mother punished me for my disobedience.”

“So you believe your mother had a hand in orchestrating the experience you had?”

It was a yet another question the Doctor posed that Celeste was taken aback by. She once believed that this memory was nothing more than a little girls fantasy, too scared to understand the realities of smoke and mirrors. But now…

“Miss Simmons?”

Celeste went back to studying her hands as she said in vacant response; “I think my mother loved me, but loved her secrets more.” Of course it was more than that. Her mother’s secrets had consumed her. Her secrets had killed her and Celeste would be damned if she let the same happen to her.

 

_‘Why? Why did I trust you? Why do they?’_

_An incessant pound._

_A serpentine smile._

_A soft cry._


	2. Chapter 2

I didn't know my mother was dead. Not at first.

I called her name, the slow, methodical tick of the grandfather clock, the only response. There was no smell of incense wafting through the house, no gentle humming as I came to a stop outside the double doors to ‘the room.’ They eased open at my hesitant touch, cold air hitting me like a mighty breath.

I saw her there; sprawled on the table, her face screwed into a grotesque mask of pain. Shards of glass peppered the carpet and sprinkled her hair. I stepped closer. Blood long since congealed marred her porcelain skin. One hand gripped the tablecloth, the other seeming to grasp the place where her crystal ball used to be.

I tried to wake her, shake her, allow my tears to heal her. I peered into sightless green eyes with the hope that they would blink. I willed that screaming mouth to twist into a smile. But they didn’t. Even as I pawed at the pale hand that'd grown rigid as stone; I hoped - I _wished_ for the skin to grow warm and soft. For that hand to squeeze my fingers once more.

My mother was dead.

The Doctor stared at Celeste, understanding in his pale blue eyes - not pity. He slid a box of tissues over to her. They were decorated with a mirage of tropical birds. Celeste smiled but waved them away. “How had your mother been that morning?” He asked, his voice quiet but not soft.

She’d been happy that morning. I could still see the ghost of a smile on her face. “These clients are important. I don’t want to be interrupted,” she’d chirped. “This couple’s paid for the premium pack; five hours of my time and specialities. I think they’ve an appetite for something big!” I’d rolled my eyes. But my mother’s had gleamed.  

I continued to kneel beside her body for an hour. I dared not look upon her again, instead clamping my eyes shut. I thought of her smile. I thought of her laugh. And my muttering pleas of life and love did not stop until there were hands under my arms, hauling me away.

 

“They said she’d died of a heart attack.”

Celeste smiled a cold and brittle smile. A smile that failed to reach her eyes as she now stared vacantly at the wall.

“You believe differently?” The Doctor ceased his writing.

“I believe she was murdered.”

 

_‘You let the darkness claim me.’_

 

_A sharp pain._

_A sticky red._

_A scream._

 

*  *  *

 

_October 29th 2014. Celeste age: 14_

 

It was black. Black and shiny and smelled like fresh plastic - not carrion.

That was what they’d placed her mother in.

Celeste could see, from her perch on the curb, the frozen puffs of breath expelled from each paramedic. Their faces looked drawn and pale in the flashing blue of the ambulance lights. They pulsed excitedly, bathing the men and the black lump they carried, in an unnatural hue.

Celeste stared at the gurney.

The thing it carried could barely be seen as it faded into the dark background of the house. It looked like it would swallow the two paramedics up if they didn't leave fast enough. But her mother - Celeste knew it would keep her mother cocooned in it somewhere. Somewhere safe. Somewhere in that room.

She turned, the itchy blanket encasing her sliding off.

Her eyes were drawn towards a window - it’s glass shining wickedly in the light of the ambulance. The curtains usually draped across it were gone. As were the trinkets usually dangling from the pane. Celeste squinted, the house allowing her to peer into the darkness of that room she hated so much.

The room that’d killed her mother.

It was pitch black until a revolving blue siren pierced through it, the glass not glaring the light away but welcoming it. Wanting Celeste to see what remained within the room. What remained of her mother’s presence in the house.

Nothing. Nothing but a shattered orb and a rumpled tablecloth. Celeste glared at it. Hurling daggers towards what she thought had caused all this, at what’d taken her mother’s sanity. Her life. But it was that violent anger that pulsed through her, that red that began to seep into her vision that was wiped away when she saw the darkness move.  

It shifted.

The darkness _shifted_ closer to the window. A hand ran down the glass, sharp fingers curling.

The darkness was a funny shape, its outline vague amongst the shadows. But still there. It’s head; a large and lumpy thing, it’s body without figure.

Celeste balked, turning as rigid as her mother, sweat oozing from her pores despite the sub-zero climate. She blinked - about the only movement she could manage. That figure - that darkness did not leave her sight.

That was when the ringing started. Something warm and wet dribbled from her nose and onto her lips. As an indescribable pressure built in her head, threatening to burst her eyes.

It was all so clear; the agony, the fear, the darkness. Then-

 

_nothing..._

 

*  *  *

 

The Doctor was silent. A silence that hung in the room like a dense fog. “It was because of emotional trauma,” Celeste said, swiping some of that silence away. “At least that’s what the doctors told my aunt and uncle.”

He’d sat there, listening, for what seemed like hours. His pad of paper lay flat on the low table between them and had been for the past twenty minutes. The Doctor’s hands were clasped in his lap. Calm, relaxed, patient. That was the man who she sat before - despite what madness had spewed from her mouth. He hadn’t batted an eye.

“This is quite normal. I've heard many stories, and I've been around more blocks than I care to mention,” he said with a rye smile. “The difficulty of my job is convincing you that I understand how you feel. And I need to do that - and you need to _trust_ me - so that I can help.” He removed his spectacles, his stare seeming to swallow her. “Let me tell you a story. Don't worry, this won't be a long, drawn out, epic tale of teenage angst and overbearing parents. This is a tale that may resonate with you.”

“My mentor in university was an astute and caring man. He helped many - even saved a few lives. But he was not perfect. He was human. Just as I am. Just as you are. Humans infamously make mistakes - however, this mistake was grave. One morning he came into my small office at the time, deathly pale and uncharacteristically agitated. I asked what was wrong and he claimed that he’d killed a boy.” The Doctor rubbed at his face with a broad hand. “A patient of his, suffering from...well, what you may well be suffering from too Celeste. This patient could hear voices, could sense things in the air - believed he could feel a presence following him. Although I cannot divulge any specifics to the patient's condition, I _can_ say that my mentor lent me the audio cassettes from ‘back in the day.” He paused, swallowing thickly before continuing in a quietened voice, “I listened to that young man speak. I listened to each breath, each hesitation, each rustle of his clothes. And I’ve never been more afraid.”

The Doctor had grown pale. Celeste kept silent. “I’ve never been more afraid - because I _believed_ him.”

“What happened to him?”

“Unfortunately, the boy took his own life. I still visit his grave as a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?”

“A reminder of why I do what I do. Of how to keep an open mind. How to make connections with patients so I can help them through whatever truths they need to express - however unfathomable.”

And those blue eyes of his, that voice, were now lost in shadow - in memory. The man that sat before Celeste, the _Doctor_ \- was haunted.

Perhaps just as she was.  

 

_‘You lied to me. I have not forgotten. Neither have the others…’_

 

_A clammy palm._

_A shaky breath._

_A spreading numbness._

 

*  *  *

 

_October 2nd 2017. Celeste age: 17_

 

Every year, always at the start of October, she dreamt. Frightful dreams, If they could even be classified as such.

They just felt so.. _.real._ Too real.

Celeste was always in the house - in that room. But it wasn’t her, she knew that because she wasn’t seeing through her eyes, she was seeing through someone else's; feeling like an impostor. And the fear. Oh there was always so much fear, coating the stranger’s skin in sweat, beading across their forehead and sticking to their dress.

Celeste didn’t yet know much about the stranger she dreamed through, just that she was female, with a curvaceous body and an affinity for strange dresses and lethal manicures.

And it was dark. Dark enough that even the figures lurking in the shadows had fled. But the woman was not afraid of them. No, her attention was fixed on the table before her - or rather, what was _on_ the table;

A ball which began to glow, a beacon in that suffocating darkness.

Only then was the woman afraid. Not of the dark, not of the silence - but of the orb. Of that sickening green glow floating in a hazy bubble around it. She backed away, her eyes never leaving what seemed to advance towards her. Until she hit a wall.

Celeste felt the body’s breathing hitch, a lump caught in it’s throat. She turned to look at what’d stopped her. Turned to find that she could see only one thing; a mirror. And a face in that mirror - a face of a ghost.

Her mother’s face.  

She screamed. The green glow illuminating what stared back at her; skin sallow and features stretched into the same scream she died with.

Whatever her mother saw, Celeste could not. Through this body’s eyes all she could see was a normal mirror - a face of one long since dead peering out from it.

And suddenly there was no light.

Darkness remained, thick and immovable.

But a reflection could still be seen, a reflection that the body fought against. Celeste had no control as a fist lashed out, colliding with the glass. A crack splintered through its pristine surface just as pain lanced through her hand, warm blood dribbling down the knuckles.

 

_“It was you! You killed her!”_

 

It was Celeste’s face that spat these words. _Her_ reflection that snarled back, a jagged crack slicing through it, distorting the image in such away she looked almost inhuman.

And then it reached out - reached for her. It’s pale arms, then shoulders, passing through the glass as if it were nothing but air.

Celeste’s reflection shot towards her, hands like talons digging into the shoulders of the body she was still trapped in.

It’s eyes were wide, unblinking and clouded with death. The reflection did not breath, there was no warmth caressing the bare skin exposed to the creature. It only smiled; a slimy, poisonous thing - dripping with malice and promises of pain. A smile that if put on anything not so abhorrent and vile - would perhaps seem gentle, comforting.

And it smelled. God, it _stunk_. Stale sweat and rotting fish shoved itself up her nose. But it was the overpowering scent, of something so sweet which rendered Celeste helpless as the creature’s nails punctured her shoulders.

Another scream. Celeste’s own scream - as she shot up from her prostrate position on the bed. It still rang in her ears, through her head, in her blood; an echo that never seemed to disperse.

 

She didn’t sleep the following night. Or the one after that...

 

*  *  *

 

“When’s the last time you slept properly Celeste?”

Again, the Doctor hadn’t spoken a word during her account of the tale. Instead he sat very still, looking not at her but instead closing his eyes, steepling his fingers and seeming to relive the events with her.

“Sleeping is how the mind works through issues experienced when awake. At night, the mind digests the events of the day and mixes them with memories of the past - presenting them in a surreal and illogical landscape. And as regards to the feelings you have towards your childhood trauma… it’d be unprofessional for me to even _consider_ working through this in our first session. This'll be something we’ll be dealing with over the coming weeks.”

Celeste caught her breath, swallowing the sob rising in her chest.

In turn, the Doctor stood, blue eyes brushing passed her before he asked;

“Care for a cup of tea?”

 

_‘...Neither will this one.’_

 

_A soft murmur._

_A dark blur._

_Nothing._


End file.
